Berlioz vs. Cherubini

I. Introduction

The ninth chapter of Berlioz’s Mêmoires (for the full text see here) begins talking about the author’s admission into the Paris Conservatory in 1826 through the mediation of Jean-François Le Sueur (a musical eminence who taught composition there), then backs up to recount an incident that occurred in the previous year involving the no less eminent Luigi Cherubini, at that time director of the Conservatory.

Until fairly recently Cherubini was known principally for his 1797 Médée, and not even in the form he wrote it (as an opéra-comique), but rewritten as a pure opera, and in Italian. In the last few decades people have been learning a lot about lesser-known French (and adoptive French) composers, and performing and recording their (formerly not well-known) works. A native of Florence, Cherubini settled in France c1785 and had a very distinguished career there, first in opera, and then (after a hiatus) in religious music. (For a list of his compositions, see here. For recordings, see here.) He was director of the Paris Conservatory from 1822.

Cherubini was well thought of by his contemporaries; Beethoven considered him the best contemporary composer after himself (Cherubini did not return the favor). Berlioz presents a sourer picture of him, since Cherubini was a member of the musical establishment that caused many problems for the younger composer. Berlioz mentions him frequently in the Mémoires, and almost never in a favorable light.

The other name it will help to know about is (Christoph Willibald) Gluck, the score of whose Alceste Berlioz is consulting in the Conservatory library when interrupted by Cherubini and an attendant. Of Austrian origin, Gluck spent the final phase of his career (1774-1779) in Paris, where he promoted operatic reform with the productions of his Iphigénie en Aulide, Orphée et Euridice, Alceste, and Iphigénie en Tauride. Berlioz accords him the highest veneration.

En me rendant – On the different meanings of the verb rendre, see here.

ignorant – I pity the person who doesn’t know the correct translation of ignorer.

la cour – This word is used for an enclosed space open to the sky. Many buildings in French cities have have a cour inside them. (See the films Rear Window and le Crime de M. Lange, in both which dramas the cour plays an important rôle.)

voulut – Here voulut has the other meaning that vouloir can have in a perfective tense (passé simple or passé composé): “tried.”

paître – means “to graze,” but that won’t work as a translation here.

l’argus – “spy, guard” (like the many-eyed mythological being who guarded Io for Hera). Also, a price guide (e.g., of used cars). Also, used as the name of various products (e.g., military surveillance aircraft).

la figure plus cadavéreuse… – A series of “absolute participial phrases” (my term), here involving (as they usually do) a part of the body: face, hair, eyes, step. For translation, see below.

votre défense – For this special meaning that the verb défendre and the noun une défense can have, see this Language topic. Also, at the end of this section: Zé vous défends d’y revenir, moi!

« Ah… —Monsieur!… – French guillemets do not work in quite the same way as English quotation marks. One set surrounds the entire dialogue; a change of speaker is indicated by a dash. Meanwhile, (“s)he said”s are set off simply by inversion (dit-il, dit-elle). For more, see this commentary section on Chapter 10 (scroll down).

Et qu’est-ce que vous regardent les partitions de Gluck? – Correcter French would have been: Que vous regardent…, but the poor man is beside himself. The meaning of regarder here is something like “concern.” Consider the popular put-down:

Ça vous regarde? (Does that concern you?)

ce que je connais de plus beau – The adjective plus beau is attached to the indefinite relative pronoun ce que by the preposition de, similarly to what happens in these constructions:

1 Le Sueur, seeing (that) my studies of harmony (were) fairly advanced, decided1 to regularize my position, by having me enter his class in the Conservatory. He spoke about it to Cherubini, at that time the director of this establishment, and I was admitted. Very fortunately, it was not proposed, on this occasion, to introduce myself to the fearful author of Medea, for, the previous year, I had put him into one of his white rages by standing up to him in the circumstance I am going to relate and that he could not have forgotten.

2 No sooner had Cherubini become head of the Conservatory,2 as a replacement for Perne who had just died, than he resolved to announce his arrival by means of strict measures unknown in the interior organization of the school, in which puritanism was not exactly the order of the day.3 He decreed, so as to make the encounter of the two sexes impossible outside of the surveillance of the professors, that men should enter by the door on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, and women by the door on the rue Bergère; these different entrances were placed at the two opposite ends of the building.

3a Going to the library one morning, not knowing the moral decree that had just been promulgated, I entered, in accordance with my custom, by the Rue Bergère door, the women’s door,4 and I was about to arrive at the library when a custodian,5 stopping me in the middle of the courtyard, tried to make me go out again so as then to come back to same point entering through the men’s door. I found this notion so ridiculous that I sent the liveried Argus packing, and I continued on my path. The funny fellow was eager to pay court to the new master by showing himself to be as rigid as he. He did not therefore consider himself beaten, and ran to report the deed to the director. I had been absorbed by the reading of Alceste for a quarter of an hour, without a thought for this incident, when Cherubini, followed by my denouncer, entered the reading room, with his face more corpse-like, his hair more disheveled,6 his eyes more malicious, and his walk clumsier7 than usual. They made their way around the table where several readers were leaning on their elbows; after examining them all in turn, the custodian, stopping in front of me, cried out: “Here he is!”

3b Cherubini was in such a rage that he remained a moment without being able to utter a word.8 “Ah, ah, ah, ah! It’s you,” he said at last, with his Italian accent that his fury made (even) more comical, “It’s you who enter through the door that I don’t want people to pass through!” “Sir, I was unaware of your interdiction; another time I will act in conformity with it.” “Another time! Another time! What–What-What do you come to do here?” “As you can see, Sir, I come here to study Gluck’s scores.” “And just how-how-how do Gluck’s scores concern you? And who allowed you to come to-to-to the library?” “Sir!” (I was beginning to lose my calm.) “Gluck’s scores are the most beautiful dramatic music I know of, and I do not need anyone’s permission to come study them here. From ten o’clock until three the Conservatory library is open to the public; I have the right to take advantage of it.” “The-the-the-the right?” “Indeed, Sir.” “And I am forbidding you to come back here!”

3c “I will come back, nevertheless.” “Wha-Wha-Wha-What is your name?” he shouted, trembling with anger. Growing pale in my turn, I answered: “Sir! My name will perhaps be known to you some day, but for today… you will not learn it!” “Stop, st-st-stop him, Hottin!” (For that was the custodian’s name.) “Let me have him thrown into prison!” They began then, both of them, the master and the valet, to the great amazement of those present, chasing me around the table, overturning stools and reading desks, without being able to reach me, and I ended up escaping at a run, throwing these words, with a burst of laughter, back at my persecutor9: “You will have neither me nor my name, and I will come back soon to study Gluck’s scores some more!”

4 This is how my first interview with Cherubini took place. I do not know if he remembered it when I was subsequently introduced to him in a more official way. It is rather amusing in any case that, twelve years later, and in spite of him, I became at last the librarian of this same library from which he had attempted to chase me. As for Hottin, he is today my most devoted orchestra boy, the most furious partisan of my music; he even claimed, during the final years of Cherubini’s life, that I was the only possible person10 to replace the illustrious master as Conservatory director. In which M. Auber was not of his opinion.